The latest: An earthquake of magnitude 6.5 jolted Afghanistan on Tuesday night and killed at least three people and injured 44 others (tally till Wednesday morning), as per the Taliban’s Ministry of Public Health of Afghanistan.
Go deeper:
- The casualties have been reported from Badakhshan, Takhar, and Laghman provinces, as per Sharafat Zaman, a spokesperson for the Taliban’s public health ministry.
- Local sources in Takhar province said that the quake claimed the life of one man in the village of Shingan, Farkhar district and wounded four others.
- Local sources in Panjshir said two children and a woman were injured after the roof of a residential house collapsed due to the quake in The Abdullah Khel Valley in the province.
- However, the exact and general figure of the number of casualties and damages from the quake is not known.
- The number of fatalities may climb as search and rescue teams reach more affected villages, said Rahimi. Some of the districts hit by the quake are extremely remote and don’t have cell phone service, Rahimi added.
- Moreover, Shafiullah Rahimi, a spokesperson for the Taliban’s disaster mitigation ministry, said that two people were killed in Laghman province due to the earthquake.
- Most people were killed and injured when the roofs of their respective homes collapsed in various parts of the country.
- According to Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Public Health had ordered all medical facilities to be prepared.
Take note: According to the US Geological Survey, the 6.5-magnitude earthquake’s epicenter was 40 kilometers to the south-southeast of Jurm district in Badakhshan province in Afghanistan’s Hindukush mountain range, which borders Pakistan and Tajikistan.
- It is worth mentioning that the depth of the quake was 194 kilometers and the center of Kalafgan district of Takhar province has been established.
- Due to the proximity of the Chaman fault, the region is vulnerable to devastating earthquakes. Several have occurred in Afghanistan and Pakistan, causing property damage and fatalities.
Zoom out: A powerful earthquake that struck Paktika, Khost, in southeast Afghanistan on June 22, 2022, resulted in more than 1,052 fatalities and thousands of injuries.
- Afghanistan has a long history of earthquakes, many of which happen in the mountainous Hindu Kush region that borders Pakistan.
